Talk about video games, movies, music, news, and technology without wading through a thousand dumb kids and dozen exclamation points after each sentence. Try it out for a few days and remember what it's like to breathe Internet air without getting two lungs full of stupid.

Eschewing life bars for health regen and smearing strawberry jam on the player's screens has been absolutely done to death this gen, it's more the rule than the exception. What's up with Nick talking about it like it's some fresh, new approach? I do agree I'd like to see more enemies reflect BATTLE DAMAGE ACTION rather than just absorbing millions of hits without breaking a stride then exploding into gibs when their life bar arbitrarily bottoms out.

As I recall, we were talking about life bars, which have been around since God knows when, so the Gears approach is new by comparison. I hated it at first, but I admit that it's a perfect evolution when you have a high percentage of players that hate dying and repeating a level more than a couple of times. Just make sure there's a higher difficulty to play, too.

Thank you for listening and commenting. This episode was the only one, I think, where it ended up with that terrible mix. What I try to do is use both channels, making some participants more prominent in one than the other, but this time I had to use the group file, which was mixed like that, and I neglected to make the proper adjustment.

I'll put up a remastered version at some point, but listen to podcast 9, which is going up tomorrow night, and tell me what you think about that approach. It'll be more like previous episodes, but a little differently mixed. (Plus, I think it's an even more entertaining show this week.)

There was 1 other episode that had the split audio also, 2 or 3 back, good to know it won't be like that in the future. I play more than just monster hunter! I did listen to all these and have lively debates with Mzo about them. Generally me complaining a lot and him ignoring me.

Too many too fast. Also focusing on member's traits are inside jokes that don't expand your target audience if you really want that? It is very clickish and doesn't mean shit to new members. Set a goal and Mariccio can cheat on Monster Hunter all he wants. The podcasts are good but I don't care to hear circle jerks.

Disclaimer: I've never played Mass Effect, and I have a vested interest in the topic.
I'm interested in the difference between Mass Effect on 360 and PC. When Mass Effect came up I thought it was going to be in a good way, but Chris you said that both versions were terrible for inv. I guess the conversation had moved past the 'port' part of the conversation by then?
I've heard/read that the PC port was very well done, basically what you would want from a redone console->PC port. I know Mzo just played it on 360, maybe I'll make him try the PC one and see what he thinks.